19. Publishing your essay - why not?

An essay amounts to a great deal of work. Perhaps you spent 50 or more hours on it. It may have been a genuinely formative period for you as you worked through a theological issue at depth. You may have surprised yourself by finding that your mind has changed on a particular issue. Students often speak to me of their theology essay as a landmark in their formation as pastor-teachers. It seems a pity to let all that work only have a single reader – you marker.

What's more may be that the marking process has exposed some significant (or even just minor) flaws in your piece. It would be a pity to let the opportunity of revising the piece in the light of expert comment go to waste. Part of really learning is making the most of second chances.

You should ask yourself - what can I now do with this material?

That is not to say that every piece of theological essay work is ready for academic publication. By no means! But written publication takes many forms. And preparing for a public audience is a discipline that will refine your thinking even further.

So you need to take stock. It could be that your piece is truly outstanding and has been rewarded with the appropriate marks. This is still not to say that it is a piece of peer-reviewed material ready for the Scottish Journal of Theology, but perhaps it could be with a bit of spit and polish. Why not use some vacation time to really push the piece into the stratosphere? Take every bit of advice and criticism you can, and extend the work to give it a bit more depth perhaps. Ask your teachers what they would do. There are of course many journals that would publish work with not quite as much finesse - take The Churchman, or Anvil, or Reformed Theological Review. These second-tier journals might be a great place to put your work, and you'll find them grateful at least for your interest.

It could be, however, that your piece could be adapted to a magazine-style piece. This will need a bit of a change of tone, perhaps a sexier introduction, and a scalpel applied to some of your quotes and footnotes. Imagine an intelligent layperson as your reader, and try to explain the material to them. It will need a clear explanation of what the point of the exercise is. Make it into an article The Briefing could publish - you could take their articles as a model perhaps.

You could of course self-publish, on a blog or somewhere else on line, perhaps. The advantage of blogging is that you get exposed to the withering criticism of anyone who happens to happen by. But you may have to publish your piece in parts in order to make it digestible.

Why not consider how the things you have learnt would go at a seminar or workshop at a conference? Again, the trick is to see if you can make the ideas you have come up with switch genres - and to see if you can sharpen up your ideas in the light of the feedback you have got from the marking process.